This is Hell
by Devil's Espresso
Summary: Kate's internal struggles. Character oneshot.


**My notes:** Uh. Well, yeah, this was written on a whim, and I can't stop writing one-shot character breakdowns, it occupies me and makes me sad. So let's avoid the "I don't get it" questions. Heheh. If you watch the show, and you know about all the crap that's happened to Kate, my not-direct mentioning of it should make sense. Notice how I never say the character's name so that if you don't read the Summary you can have fun guessing who this is about! Aren't I cool?

---------------------------------------------------------------

I do not own the characters in this story, nor do I own any rights to the television show "Lost". They were created by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof and they belong to them, Touchstone, and ABC.

I do not own Elvis Costello or the song "This is Hell".

---------------------------------------------------------------

**This is Hell**

The lights of the Christmas tree carelessly throw a mixture of red, green, and orange all over the teal chair. She sits, distractedly gnawing at a fingernail, studying her hands carefully, as though looking for something. She reaches out a pallid hand, flicking a chime hanging limply from a branch of the dying, gaudily decorated tree. The tinkling, bell-like noise it produces is muffled by the white earphones she wears.

Listening to songs about pretty girls and cheerful memories has done nothing to help her demeanor. She wants desperately to do something, anything. Smoke a cigarette. Eat something. Drink some water. Anything. But all she has are the gleeful melodies. She is too afraid to listen to men in thick-rimmed glasses sing sad songs. It could put her in a state.

Despite the sounds in her ears, the absent chewing of her nails, two feelings prevail inside of her. A slow, constantly growing sense of fear, and a sick-type feeling in the very pit of her stomach. She scoffs to herself -- people say fear affects your stomach? No. Real fear makes your palms sweat, your skin oil, your hair frazzle, and it constricts your entire being. The fear you get when you know you'll die before you turn thirty, when you know you won't be able to sleep that night. When you feel like you'll die before morning. The kind of fear where you know you'll be lonely forever.

She doesn't look up from the yellowed pad of paper that rests in her lap. Every night until now, she has looked through the darkness of the small house. She knows no one is there. She knows no one is coming to find her. No one is coming to hold her. No one is coming to care. She cracks a knuckle, chewing her bottom lip now -- clenching the thin pencil tightly in her hand.

Before, when she wrote on the old notepad, her hands would shake. Self pity would invade her senses, and she would lose control, spilling her insides, her everything, onto the paper. She liked to write, even if it was at 2:44 AM with nothing but faint, dappled strings of Christmas lights to go by. Carefully, she pencils the date at the top of this fresh page: "December 26th". Gingerly, she sets the walkman on the chair beside her, moving the pencil down to the first line of the paper.

She feels her fingers begin to quiver. She has no idea what to write about. Herself. That is always a possibility. With a small twinge of shame, she sets the pencil firmly to the paper again. She becomes aware, all at once, of the music in her ears again. The lights beside her, and the dry smell of pine. She looks around, feeling a curious sensation inside herself -- it's not the fear or the sickly feeling. She can't _feel_ anything. There is just the apprehension and the feeling of malaise. Digging nails into her palms, she tries vainly to pinpoint the problem.

She shakes her head in small, spastic movements. She can't remember the last time she actually did eat or drink anything. Or the last time she slept, or anything, really. But, she isn't tired, she isn't hungry, she isn't anything at all. And her mind is blank. She presses the pencil resolutely against the paper. There is something deep in the recesses of her mind that she knows she wants to write.

Hesitantly, unbidden, the words begin, seemingly, to scrawl themselves on the paper:

_This is hell..._

She pauses, squeezing the pencil, as though rifling through long forgotten files in her mind for the next thing to write.

_This is hell, this is hell,_

For a moment, she thinks she remembers what it is.

_I am sorry to tell you._

She feels a familiar feeling in her clouded mind. It feels, almost, as though heat is rushing to the top of her skull. Like her brain is working again. A tiny prodding feeling licks at her fingertips, a ghastly white from the grip on the pencil. Ever so slowly, the tiny pricks creep their way up her arms, past her elbows.

_It never gets better or worse._

She remembers it being easy, before, like when she always wrote on the notepad, to think. She remembers it being easy to reason with herself, yet, for some reason, now, she cannot feel, cannot think. She feels her hand slackening on the writing utensil as the pricking feelings wash over her shoulders and up her neck.

_But you get used to it after a spell._

Without emotion, she realizes, despite her weak grip, that she is still whipping the words out onto the paper. A sudden feeling of excitement envelopes her as a whole, but she cannot move. _Oh._ In a horrific moment, she feels the pain of drawing breath. She feels the blood beating in her veins. She feels _alive_; terrified at how fearful she is of the feeling. There is a god-awful searing sensation all along her wrists. She cranes her neck hurriedly, not wanting to miss her chance to find what ails her.

_For heaven is hell in reverse._

She hears the pencil clatter against the paper, with such a shockingly hollow sound that even the happy songs in her ears are obliterated. She cannot tear her eyes from the thin, swollen red slashes on her wrists, running vertically. She feels her hands begin to shake the way they did the week before. The way they did when she wrote about herself, and no one else. The way they shook when she tried to forget it all.

_This is hell._


End file.
